building led to that memorable march against the Breton in which William and Harold fought as fellow-soldiers.[1]
The castle granted to Earl Hugh. We are not told what were Henry's relations with Britanny at the time when this great border fortress passed into his hands. Bretons had been his only friends at the time of the siege of the Mount; but their friendship for the Count of the Côtentin was perhaps felt for him, not so much in that character as in that of the enemy of the Norman Duke and the English King. It may possibly mark a feeling that the Celtic peninsula might again become a dangerous land, when the guardianship of the chief bulwark against the Bretwealas of the mainland was given to one who had full experience of warfare with the Bretwealas of the great island. The Earl of Chester had a hereditary call to be the keeper of the castle of Saint James. The fortress had, on its first building, been entrusted by the Conqueror to the guardianship of Earl Hugh's father, the Viscount Richard of Avranches. Hugh's treason when King and Duke came against him was now forgotten; his earlier and later services were remembered; and the restored prince, now once more Count as well as Ætheling, granted the border castle, not as a mere castellanship, but as his own proper fief, to the lord of the distant City of the Legions.[2]
We have thus seen the power of William the Red firmly established on both sides of the sea. He had received the homage of Scotland; he had enlarged the
- ↑ See N. C. vol. iii. p. 228.
- ↑ Will. Gem. viii. 4. "Quia in hoc negotio et in aliisque plerisque suis necessitatibus Hugo comes Cestrensis ei fidelis exstiterat, concessit ei ex integro castellum quod sancti Jacobi appellatum est, in quo idem comes tunc temporis nihil aliud habebat, præter custodiam munitionis istius oppidi." He goes on to describe the building of the castle, in words partly borrowed from William of Poitiers, and the grant to Richard of Avranches. On Richard, see N. C. vol. ii. pp. 209, 296.
